You are a Quebec politician. You win a riding in a provincial election or by-election. You go to Quebec City to take your seat in the National Assembly. But you won’t be allowed to if you are a kippa-wearing Jew. Or a turban-wearing Sikh. Or a hijabi Muslim.

That’s one scenario under the Parti Québécois government bill tabled Thursday, a worse version of the Charter of Quebec Values it unveiled in September.

The charter was to exempt members of the assembly from a proposed ban on religious symbols and clothing for civil servants and public sector employees. Accused of double standards, the PQ has responded by extending the discrimination to provincial politicians as well.

Interestingly, the bill coincides with the axing of a similar ban on religious attire in a far-away land, which has had little to teach Canada, so far. In a historic democratic moment, Turkey’s parliament has welcomed four hijab-wearing women, having reversed a decades-old law. Kemal Ataturk, an autocratic ruler, had imposed that law invoking secularism, just as Pauline Marois is doing. He did it in the early 20th century, trying to hold his nation together amid the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, while she is doing it in 21st-century Canada.

Rather than diluting her much-criticized charter (such as restricting the religious clothing ban only to judges and police), she has toughened it.

Dress restrictions would be extended to contractors supplying goods and services, as well as those receiving a government subsidy.

The charter had proposed five-year exemptions to municipalities and institutions. Many in multicultural Montreal promptly said they would apply. But the bill decrees only a one-time exemption. And even during that period, no kippa, turban or hijab may be allowed in police and fire departments.

Only hospitals and healthcare institutions with a long-held “confessional dimension,” meaning Montreal’s Jewish General, would qualify for further exemptions.

Daycare centres may be barred from serving kosher or halal food, perhaps even vegetarian meals, should the latter be the religious preference of a Hindu family.

“A repeated activity or practice stemming from a religious precept, in particular with regard to dietary matters, must not be authorized if its aim, through words or actions, is to teach children that precept,” says Section 30 of the bill.

The bill would make it difficult for employers and educational institutions to accommodate employees and students on non-Christian religious holidays.

“When an accommodation request on religious grounds involves an absence from work, a public body must more specifically consider the frequency and duration of absences on such grounds, the size of the administrative unit, the consequences on the work of other personnel …,” thunders Section 16.

Adds Section 17: “If an accommodation request on religious grounds concerns a student attending an educational institution established by a school board, the school board must take into account … compulsory school attendance, the basic school regulations, the school’s educational project …”

Anthony Housefather, mayor of Côte St-Luc, which has a sizeable Jewish population, tells me: “The government is saying to institutions that are already making such accommodations not to extend them, or to make them very difficult to get. A school board may have to tell students they can’t get an exemption for Yom Kippur or Friday noon prayers.”

No one wearing a face-covering niqab may receive any government service, including presumably emergency health care. (This was proposed by Liberal premier Jean Charest but not implemented).

The “scariest section of the bill,” says Housefather, is the proposal to amend the Quebec Human Rights Act to reflect the charter’s three defined values – separation of state and religion, equality of men and women, and the primacy of French language.

French already has primacy. But in cases where workers speak a language other than French, judges “take into account their freedom of speech and also whether restricting it would constitute a reasonable limit.” That balance might now go out of the window.

The Human Rights Act must also make “allowance for the emblematic and toponymic elements of Québec’s cultural heritage that testify to its history.” That might mean keeping Catholic symbols in the name of tradition but excluding the Star of David in the name of secularism, even though the first Jews came to Quebec in 1760.

The PQ bill is based on false assumptions – that gender equality is eroded by a hijab (rather it is enhanced by upholding the right of a woman to wear what she wants, rather than being told by men or government); that you cannot provide “neutral service” if you wear a kippa or a turban; and that such believers might somehow proselytize others.

“Just because a civil servant is wearing a kippa or a hijab, nobody is going to rush out and convert to Judaism or Islam,” says Morton Weinfeld, professor of sociology at McGill. And the idea that a “religious person won’t give you a fair shake in official dealings is as ridiculous as wondering, Would a male judge be fair to a female defendant, a straight prosecutor to a gay person, or a white civil servant to a black citizen?”

The bill is based on demagoguery. It proposes a solution for a problem that does not exist. It divides society.

It is Orwellian. It claims to preserve secularism by axing a fundamental secular right – the right to freedom of religion that includes the right to show it.

The ostensibly leftist PQ is following rightwing European xenophobes, anti-Semites and Islamophobes. Its bill goes in tandem with recently announced reductions in immigration to Quebec. It is pandering to Quebecers who think that immigration is a threat to “the heritage of Quebec society” (46 per cent, according to a Léger poll) and those who are alarmingly intolerant of religious minorities (according to Forum Research and Angus Reid polls).

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